Aristocracy, Meritocracy, Technocracy, and Revolution
All human societies have informal social classes or formal social castes that separate groups of people within the same community. Generally speaking, notions of aristocracy and hereditary nobility started on the battlefield. Warrior chiefs of clans became minor kings after killing more rivals without dying themselves. Rather than remaining in a constant state of tribal conflict, the chiefs of other clans bent the knee and became lesser lords. Because kings and lords prefer their heirs to be kings and lords, too, bloodlines afforded children the social status that their ancestors had earned on the battlefield.
A ruling king who provided security and stability earned deference from those under his protection. Over time, tribes combined to become nations. Chieftains cooperated to form royal courts. And the heirs of warrior chiefs adopted customs and traditions that symbolically separated those who rule from those who are ruled.
During social upheavals, the ruling aristocracy is often overthrown. This provides hereditary nobles an incentive not only to quell rebellions quickly but also to find ways to keep the interests of non-nobles aligned with the aristocratic class. Gifts of land, titles, and property buy a certain amount of loyalty. The creation of minor offices apportions power to those deemed “worthy” of holding it. The historic growth of administrative bureaucracies creates a path for non-nobles to exercise their talents in the service of those who rule.
To the consternation of Europe’s aristocratic class, the Great War ushered in a popular revolution against the hereditary order. Several centuries of a growing middle class, increased literacy, industrial innovation, entrepreneurialism, and more widespread property ownership helped to create the social conditions for broad swaths of Europe’s populations to question why bloodlines should matter more than intelligence, talent, and hard work. Many European families who lost fathers and sons during the First World War blamed European nobles for the calamity.
By the time the Second World War had provided an extra helping of self-destructive ruin, many of Europe’s noble houses were no more. Those that had survived were acutely wary of suffering the fates of so many cousins who had been hanged, burned, or shot. For the surviving members of Europe’s aristocracy to endure, they had no choice but to hand considerable political powers to the common people. The twentieth century shepherded government reforms, suffrage for men and women without property, public welfare statutes, and expanded opportunities for common people to become part of the State’s governing bureaucracy.
While these reforms were celebrated as triumphs for “democracy,” it is important to understand that they did not completely supplant the vestiges of European aristocracy. In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords still recognized the inherent right to rule of certain families. Men with noble titles still ran central banks, trading houses, and clandestine agencies. The attachés of those administrative lords still came from the “best families” and attended the “finest schools.” Increasingly, however, the children of middle class families competed for and secured positions within the larger bureaucratic staff.
This twentieth century transition — in which citizens from low social classes were more broadly included in the functions of government — marked the social pivot to what Westerners call “meritocracy.” No longer would a person’s bloodline serve as the limits of what that person might achieve in this life. Instead, natural intelligence, hard work, and determination could provide a person of any means the opportunity to rise as high as he might wish.
“Meritocracy” was an alluring idea to sell to the common people who had already destroyed so much of the aristocrats’ cherished social order in the first half of the twentieth century. Out with the nobles! In with the people who deserve to have power! From the point of view of someone in the lower or middle classes, a system that rewards skill, smarts, and determination sounds much fairer.
However, “meritocracy” provides an ancillary benefit to a ruling class seeking to maintain control: It keeps the most ambitious members of the non-noble classes competing against each other for a small number of powerful positions and reinforces the legitimacy of the governing system as a whole. People who study, sacrifice, and struggle to obtain a little power within a governing bureaucracy are not inclined to question, criticize, or delegitimize that system once vested with a modicum of authority inside of it.
With the rise of the “meritocracy,” residual ruling class families found endless opportunities to keep unsuspecting commoners chasing their tails. A hundred years ago, “gentlemen” in positions of power had, at most, a college education. The transition toward “meritocracy” convinced members of the lower classes that they needed all kinds of postgraduate degrees to prove their “expertise.” Just keep studying, kids, and you might finally have the right credentials to do the same job as a bunch of lords once did before they had reached the age of twenty-two! In the meantime, stay poor, follow the rules, question nothing, and the ruling class might find a position for you once you’ve begged long enough.
In pursuit of “meritocracy,” commoners have been conditioned to believe that you cannot be successful without at least a college education. In turn, the remnants of the noble ruling class have turned colleges into indoctrination laboratories that reinforce the ideologies of the ruling system. Members of the Old Guard, in other words, have found the perfect mechanism through which to subordinate the very people otherwise inclined to overthrow them. Say ‘Hello’ to the new nobility; it looks just like the old one!
Unfortunately for the powers that be, there are widening cracks now in the “meritocracy” illusion. Those cracks began with “affirmative action” programs in the United States that perpetuated racial discrimination, and they have continued to expand this century with the broad initiatives across the West in support of so-called “diversity, inclusion, and equity.” Preferential admissions and hiring decisions in favor of special classes of people identified by their skin color, ethnicity, sexual disposition, disability, or perceived “victimhood” have blown up the perception that “meritocracy” exists at all.
Instead, what is increasingly obvious is that the same aristocrats who have always made the rules are once again decreeing which classes of commoners will be allowed to mingle among their ranks. Out with the meritocratic! In with the multi-racial trans-furries who have trouble doing math! As institutions in the West expose themselves as part of an unjust and prejudicial political system, the legitimacy of the ruling class is increasingly under attack.
For the first time in many decades, Westerners have begun to notice that much of the old aristocracy supposedly supplanted by the “meritocracy” remains nonetheless in charge. Surprise! A century after the supposed end of hereditary rule, men and women with feudal titles still control the European Council, transnational governing bodies, international treaty organizations, and all the central banks. In other words, the illusion of “meritocracy” gave the ruling class just enough camouflage to survive several more generations.
What happens now? The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, says that artificial intelligence will soon replace most human jobs. He insists that there will be a universal high income that every common peasant receives. He says people will want for nothing…except purpose.
Perhaps Musk is right. Perhaps the lower classes will consent to a small number of elites ruling over them in perpetuity. Perhaps they will consent to mass surveillance, censorship, and State-sponsored “truths.” Perhaps they will agree to let the families of billionaires behave as entourages within royal courts in support of a coterie of technocratic kings.
Or perhaps we are destined for social upheaval. Perhaps what started on the battlefield will return to it. Perhaps the ruling aristocracy will finally be overthrown. Regardless, the future will be interesting.